Hello

I am a consultant in service design, innovation and product management. For more than 15 years I worked in product strategy and design leadership in the amazing world of web and mobile media. Before that I was a newspaper journalist and history student. I'm on the web at mattedgar.com.

How can we stop disempowering people?

The session I pitched had a deliberately ambiguous title – I wanted to know, when participants saw the word “people,” whether they thought first of the people we serve, or the people who deliver service? It turned out to be both, and a consensus that we can only empower citizens if staff are also empowered. It’s also my contention that it’s not the government’s job to empower anyone – everyone should start with power, our job is not to disempower them.

At the end of the session everyone came up with a thing they could do to stop disempowering people. Sticky notes were as follows: